Toyota energy conservation efforts awarded

Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America has been named the U.S. Environmental Agency’s Energy Star Partner of the Year for the ninth consecutive time.
TEMA oversees the Japanese automaker’s engineering design, development, R&D and manufacturing operations in North America.
Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Blue Springs falls under TEMA’s wing.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi, one of the company’s four model sustainability plants worldwide, is the automaker’s most energy efficient plant in North America.
The company said its energy conservation efforts during the past decade have helped it save $370 million and cut energy use by 15 percent per vehicle it has produced – enough to power 27,000 average households.
The Blue Spring’s plant uses “innovative design and best practice techniques” from other Toyota facilities. The company said one example was its paint shop using a unique system that eliminates the need for a paint oven and installed a low-pressure adiabatic humidification system.
All of Toyota’s North American plants, including TMMMS, retrofitted their lighting to save 17 million kilowatt hours annually, enough to power 1,500 average households, and eliminating 10,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Toyota Mississippi employs more than 2,000 workers, and the plant assembles the popular Corolla compact sedan. Suppliers to the plant employ another 2,000.